


Some Fluff For Your Cocoa

by Louffox



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos is a Good Boyfriend, Fluff, Hot Chocolate, In which Cecil is terrified of snow, M/M, Snowmen, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, and cuddles, as in marshmallow, seriously he thinks it's pompeii out there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 05:02:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Louffox/pseuds/Louffox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos has to show Cecil that, no, that isn't the end of the world coming at a time other than what the prophecies say. It's just a little snowstorm. It's okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Fluff For Your Cocoa

           Carlos knew lots of strange things were normal in Night Vale. It was perfectly alright if you couldn’t answer calls for a few hours while your cell phone was feeling revolutionary. If the microwave was throwing sparks, it wasn’t a faulty plug or because someone had microwaved a fork, it was because you hadn’t made your bimonthly sacrifice to your kitchen appliances and they were feeling neglected. Waking up in the morning to find a pair of beetles rubbing oil into the cuticles of your toenails was fine, as long as you remembered to tip them with a fresh vegetable (one that isn’t orange, though!). The house that didn’t exist was a prime example of physics and optics playing a joke on the town, and the whole sandstorm incident… Carlos didn’t even know what to think of that.

       The point was that Carlos was used to Cecil (his boyfriend!) reacting normally to odd things, and reacting oddly to normal things (wheat products, writing utensils, any books that weren’t biographies of Helen Hunt). But it was one not-so-abnormal reaction to a sort-of-abnormal thing that really got Carlos.

       One day it decided to snow.

       Carlos left the lab after a long day, hair still damp from his shower- Cecil disliked the smell of agar and butane that clung to him after working, so he’d begun showering before seeing him. He was going to pick Cecil up from the station after his show, and was pleasantly surprised (though totally accepting) to see an inch of snow on the ground, and more falling in fat clumps. Maybe he should look out the window more, quit being so one-track-minded.

He just laughed and turned his windshield wipers on. It had looked like rain all day, so he had boots on, thank goodness. And the temperature, he could feel the degrees slip away as it grew cold rapidly. (He couldn’t wait to get back to the lab tomorrow and see exactly how the temperature had descended.)

       He was unsurprised to see almost no other cars on the road. Fairly closed desert community meets snow? He was glad they had the sense to stay off the roads until whatever this was cleared up.

       Almost at the station, his cell rang, and he glanced at the screen. Shit, three missed calls from Cecil, and another one coming in. He answered it, glad the Secret Police had lifted the ban on phone conversations while in motion (driving, biking, even walking while on the phone had been disallowed).

       “Hello?”

       “Carlos? I was so scared, you didn’t answer, I thought the worst… What the hell is going on out there!?” Cecil replied, his normally smooth alto gone up an octave and shaky with panic.

       “Looks like it’s snowing. Mind waiting a few minutes before we head home? I’d like to take a quick sample to make sure it’s frozen water, and not frozen else-thing,” he laughed, pulling into the station. “I’m just pulling in.”

       There was a moment of shocked silence, then- “OHMYGOD Carlos, you were driving in this!? I have overnight things here for events like this, you shouldn’t endanger yourself just to pick me up! I’m flattered, but Carlos! This is reckless!” Cecil gasped.

       “What? Cecil, calm down, it’s just snow. I’ve driven in it before. I told you- my sister lives up in New Brunswick and I always go up there for Christmas. Just give me a moment to park and I’ll be in,” he said reassuringly, now frowning lightly. He hung up without waiting for a reply and carefully backed into a spot- if driving in this made Cecil nervous, then he didn’t want to be backing up and make him even more upset.

       He switched his car off and extracted a jacket from the emergency kit he’d made in the trunk for when things like this happened. After the glow cloud fiasco, he could survive almost any conditions for a week with the contents of the kit.

       It was pretty darn cold out. It was hard to tell- he’d become acclimated to the Night Vale desert climate in the year and a half he’d been living there, and it felt like it was barely 10 degrees Fahrenheit. He caught a cluster of snowflakes on the sleeve of his flannel and brought it up to his eyes, careful not to breathe on it and melt it. From the shape and size of the flakes, and estimating the humidity to be as low as it normally was, he hypothesized that it was about 19 degrees out. Then he did breathe on it and melt it, and as far as he could tell, it was just water.

       Noise- he looked up and saw Cecil standing in the doorway of the station, holding the door open and not stepping a toe outside, calling to him and waving him in, so he jogged over.

       “For the love of everything celestial, Carlos, get inside!” the Voice of Night Vale cried.

       “Cecil, it’s just snow,” he said (for the third time?) and held out a hand to catch more flakes.

       “We can talk about what it is and what it isn’t, just please come inside,” he begged. Carlos looked at him- gosh, he looked like he was about to cry- and complied, stepping inside and allowing Cecil to slam the door shut behind him. He dropped the bright orange EMERGENCY door bar in place and secured the locks one by one with shaking hands. It took him three tries to get one of the locks together- by that point, Carlos was gently placing his hands over the long, pale, trembling fingers.

       “Hey, hey. It’s okay. Let me. It’s going to be fine, Cecil,” he said softly, taking the lock from his hands and doing it himself.

       “I’m sorry, I just… I don’t understand why this is happening! There were no prophecies foretelling the end of the world so early, and anyways, it’s always been known that the world will end on a Tuesday, not on a Friday,” he said, voice high with panic. “And Old Woman Jose usually calls and gives me notice before something like this happens.”

       “The world isn’t ending. It might look odd, everything covered in white, but it’s just snow.”

       “You keep saying that, ‘snow’, but I’m not a smart scientist, Carlos, you know that! I’m a humble reporter. I know you’re smart, you don’t have to show off! I don’t know what that means,” he cried, throwing his hands up in the air. It was a testament to how upset he really was, that he was snapping at Carlos like this.

       “You don’t know what snow is?” Carlos repeated disbelievingly.

       “Alright, wise guy, if you want to be all cool and smart with your science words, fine. I’ll go ask the microwave what it means,” he huffed, turning away.

       “Wait, Cecil! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. Honestly, I didn’t realize you didn’t know what it was. Outside of Night Vale, it’s a very common thing. Well, maybe not in the desert, but snow is something everyone knows about,” he said, catching his shoulder and turning him around, alarmed to see moisture pooling in the corners of his violet eyes. His third eye was practically swimming. Carlos reached up and affectionately wiped it away. “Everything is going to be fine, Cecil. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

       Cecil sniffed. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry, I’m being a bit dramatic. It’s probably just my lyme disease.”

       Carlos let the lyme disease thing slide- despite everything he argued, Cecil continued to insist that it didn’t cause rash and swollen lymph nodes (“Carlos, don’t be silly! Anyways, I have it, I should know.”) but bouts of fear and occasional generalized emotional instability. He smiled at his boyfriend and put his arm around his shoulder. “Come on. I’ll show you about snow. Do you have a jacket in those emergency supplies?”

       As it turned out, he had a jacket. It wasn’t exactly a winter weight one- more of a thin, fall jacket, one of those sporty ones made with lots of polyester that dried quickly and was warmer than it looked. It was also bright purple with thick black vertical stripes. When Cecil put it on, Carlos couldn’t help but lean in and press a quick kiss to his lips.

       He took his hand and led him back to the door, and began undoing the locks, one by one. As each progressive bolt and chain was released, Cecil grew more visibly nervous, until finally Carlos was removing the EMERGENCY bar.

       “Now, snow is just frozen water. It’s like ice cubes, but shredded very fine. But essentially, it’s only crystallized rain. You ready?” he asked, giving his hand a few squeezes.

       “No, but I trust you,” Cecil sighed, giving him a weak smile. So Carlos pushed the door open.

       He was shocked that it was accumulating so well- the ground had frozen already? Interesting. It struck him that this could be more than a one-day event, that it could be an actual ice age coming down on Night Vale, and he hoped that wasn’t the case. There were about two inches already on the ground, and it was still coming down thick. It was beautiful.

       Cecil whimpered. “It’s erasing the world!”

       “No, it’s just covering it. The world is still there. See?” he said, stepping out into it, putting his hands up and letting the snow fall on him. He brushed some off to show that it wasn’t erasing, that he was still there under it. “Here.” He crouched and scooped up a handful, and walked it back over to where Cecil was hovering in the doorway. “Hold out your hand. It’s cold, like ice, so don’t be surprised.”

       Hesitantly, balking slightly, Cecil extended his hand, palm up, and Carlos put the handful of snow in it, shaking the water from his fingers after. Cecil gasped and shook it off quickly.

       “Brrr! That’s… it’s really cold! Are you sure it’s safe?”

       “Absolutely sure. C’mon,” he said gently, taking his hands and leading him out into the snow. Cecil gasped at he looked at it, landing on his jacket and pants and creaking as it compacted under his shoes.

       “This is surreal,” he admitted, holding his arm close to his face to inspect the snowflakes.

       “It’s fun! And it’s nice sticky snow, too, we can make a snowman,” Carlos declared, kneeling to begin rolling some snow together.

       “It’s sticky?” Cecil repeated, rubbing his fingers together that had held the snow. “No it isn’t.”

       “No, I don’t mean sticky like, spilled soda sticky. I mean it’ll stick to itself. Sometimes it’s powdery, like sand, but now it’s not. The humidity must’ve gone up,” he mused. “See how I can roll the ball and more sticks to it? We’re going to make three of these,” he explained. “Try it.”

       Soon, both of them were soaked but had sizeable snow boulders, and the two of them managed to lift Cecil’s smaller one on top of the other. (Cecil hadn’t made nearly the progress Carlos had- he’d kept stopping to giggle at the absurdity of all this, acting like he was doing something bad and getting away with it.) They worked together making the last one, and Carlos placed it on top.

       “It doesn’t look much like a man,” Cecil observed. “Or if it is supposed to be a man, it’s a fairly poor manifestation of it. It didn’t even bother with legs. If we’re going to animate it, we should do it a kindness and give it some limbs.”

       “We aren’t going to animate it,” Carlos laughed.

       “Why not?”

       “Because… because it’s just a thing. It’s just… it’s supposed to be decoration. Not a living thing.”

       “Oh,” Cecil said, frowning with realization. “Can we try to make it have limbs anyways?”

Which turned into Cecil artfully shaping legs, rearranging it so it was shaped like it was sitting, the bottom section being removed and legs stretched out in front of it. And arms, made from sticks like Carlos showed him. He found an oil rag in his car and tied it around its neck, like a kerchief, and gave it two stones for eyes, a test tube nose, and a piece of twizzler for a red smile.

And then things got a bit out of hand- while he was looking through his trunk for any more fun accessories, Cecil made a bloodstone circle and decided to animate it after all. The thing rose to it’s clunky legs and proceeded to chase them around until they managed to get into Carlos’s car and the ran the abomination over, both of them going into (slightly hysterical) laughter.

“What did I tell you about animating the snowman?” Carlos chided him.

“Not to animate it,” Cecil said, grinning guiltily.

“And what did you go ahead and do anyways?”

“...animated it.”

“And how well did that go? About as well as I’d expected!” Carlos snorted. Cecil looked at him, the picture of bashfully apologetic, big eyes looking up through his lashes and lips slightly pursed, and Carlos couldn’t maintain the straight face anymore. He bent over, cracking up, wrapping his arms around Cecil’s waist and squishing them together in a graceless hug attack.

“You… you… you had me going! I thought you were actually upset!” Cecil laughed, burying his nose in Carlos’s hair and pulling back with a wince. “Brr. Your hair is all wet from snow.” He shivered, then slid his hands up the back of Carlos’s jacket and shirt. The contact of his cold hands on his lower back made him arch away from the cold, pressing more firmly against Cecil.

“Ah! Brr! Mercy, mercy!” Carlos cried, squirming. Cecil kissed his hairline and laughed. “Alright. Enough snow fun, we should get home and get warmed up.”

He drove them back to the house (Cecil had been struggling with his apartment neighbors and between the two of them, a small house was perfect and easily within their means) with the heat turned high, but Cecil continued to shiver the whole ride. Carlos started to worry- the desert dweller wasn’t used to such cold. And they didn’t have mittens- it was cold work, making a snowman with bare hands, but they were having so much fun, he’d hardly noticed.

The moment they were in the house, he went right over to the thermostat and turned it up.

“Cecil, why don’t you go change out of those wet clothes? Put something warm on, I’ll make us some hot chocolate,” he said, using his no-nonsense leader voice. Cecil just nodded, looking less than pleased with being cold, and headed upstairs. “Socks too.” It was a tribute to how chilled and uncomfortable his boyfriend was that he didn’t complain- he had some sort of complex against anything that enclosed his toes and often just spent the entire day barefoot, going to work and all completely shoeless.

Carlos regretted his decision to make hot chocolate as he entered the kitchen- he didn’t have hot chocolate, they lived in the desert. He was always hot. (Cecil was a natural desert dweller, but Carlos still sometimes had a hard time with the heat.) But he did find cooking cocoa and sugar and chocolate syrup, and with the help of the internet, managed to pull together some surprisingly delicious hot chocolate. He poured it into two big mugs, plunked a spoon of fluff in each, and took them into the living room.

When Cecil came down, bundled up in red flannel pajama pants and a nearly painfully yellow wool sweater, Carlos had gathered the blankets and turned I Love Lucy on.

“Mmmm. Thanks,” Cecil sighed as he slumped onto the couch and tipped over dramatically so his head was pillowed on Carlos’s lap. The scientist just smiled and tucked the blankets around him and put the cocoa in his hand.

“Try this,” he said, and took a great, vicarious pleasure from watching Cecil’s face light up when he sipped at it, his upper lip getting a generous coating of half melted fluff.

"What... What is this? Its amazing," he crooned, taking another generous sip, holding the mug with both hands.

"Hot cocoa. You've never had it before?" Carlos asked incredulously. He had the biggest sweet tooth of anyone he'd ever met.

"No. I'm enjoying the warmth of it. And this... What's the white fluff on top?"

"Its called ‘fluff’. It’s just a marshmallow topping. You can put it on ice cream or in a peanut butter sandwich or made fudge with it,” Carlos explained, licking a bit off the rim of his mug. He knew he probably shouldn’t feed Cecil sugary marshmallow fluff and sugary hot chocolate- a high sugar intake resulted in an insulin spike, which in turn caused an immune crash. Especially after the snow, but he was more worried about getting his temperature back up than suppressing his immune system.

They snuggled up together under the blankets, sipping the cocoa and watching I Love Lucy reruns. Cecil predictably fell asleep- Carlos’s college experience had put him in the habit of not sleeping much most nights, then crashing for a few days, but Cecil was catlike in that, once comfortable, he was out like a light. Carlos carried him to bed and woke him just long enough to get him to lift his arms so Carlos could undress him, and then they both crawled into bed and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

 

**Author's Note:**

> In case you've never heard of it, fluff is an actual thing- it's a white marshmallow spread that you can put on a peanut butter sandwich instead of jam. It can also be used to make fudge, or rice crispy treats. It's super tasty.


End file.
